


Dial Tone

by elle_nic



Series: Phone Home [2]
Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, F/F, Melancholy, Pre-Slash, Swearing, but that's not new from me i guess, fiction&femslashevent, lighter than the first one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 01:09:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20106670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_nic/pseuds/elle_nic
Summary: Andy makes a wish, and holy fucking shit: it comes true.





	Dial Tone

**Author's Note:**

> The muse has me! Feel free to comment if you see a typo - I'm hyped up on hot chocolate and can't actually see anything. As always, please enjoy :)))

Paris was too damned bright.

It shouldn’t have surprised Andy, being the City of Lights and also having been there before, but god, it hurt to look at. The airport was as ghostly as an airport could be when she arrived, but it had been the last place that had been tolerable to her eyes. Everything about the city ached, and she didn’t think it was a coincidence. She had hesitated to accept the offer for the job and Marcia Torres, her editor, had assumed she was unsure about being abroad for several months and had given her three days to think. Andy hadn’t even thought about the job, rather how she had recalled Miranda’s face searching for her from a sea of flashing lights and shouting.

She took the job.

She hoped it wasn’t a mistake, but the way she sunk into herself as she spied the Eiffel Tower made her unsure. She had only ever been to Paris with Miranda (it was only the one time and it was certainly the last, but it still meant something, surely?). When the cab pulled up to La Place de la Concorde, she asked in her best French for the cabbie to wait for just a moment. They settled for him circling the block once to avoid the hefty parking fines.

Walking over to the fountain where she last saw her ex-boss (_Miranda_, her mind argued. _Just Miranda._) Andy wondered what Miranda had been thinking when she had tossed her phone into the gurgling water. Probably murderous thoughts, Andy chuckled morosely as she stood by the water. She pulled out a coin, an American penny and held it tightly in her hand, closing her eyes in concentration. She made a wish, a simple one, because she didn’t think she deserved anything more, and tossed her coin into the water with much less zest than she threw her phone.

She wished for… Well, she couldn’t say, or it wouldn’t come true, but she wished with her whole heart for it to become reality. She sighed once, letting the last wisps of her wish fall into the water too, alongside the gleaming penny at the bottom. She looked once, only once, to the stairs where Miranda had stood nearly two years before, and imagined what life would be like if she had turned around and clacked right up to her.

Then, for a second time, she walked away.

The next morning when she rose from her fitful sleep, she again second guessed her decision to come to Paris. But as her alarm went off again, reminding her that she had a meeting with her editor’s contact, she rolled out of bed and tried not to think about anything else again. She had a job to do, as Miranda’s voice reminded her every day. _Your job_, the voice echoed when she wondered what she should do about it all. _Should I apologise? Go see her? What should I do?_ And every day the voice answered. _Your job._

Andy was going to do her fucking job.

So she worked that day and the day after, and on the days when Marcia had scheduled a day off for her, she toured and she ate and she exercised and she _didn’t think about it._ She called Nigel and they didn’t talk about it. She laid in bed, alone, her thoughts in a pretty combination of French and English. And she didn’t think about it. She did her job, and she didn’t call Miranda or write to Miranda or email Miranda. She had been mid-article when the realisation hit her that Paris Fashion Week coincided with her assignment. It was just one thought, and after she had digested it, she did her job.

Every few days she’d return to Her Fountain and would through in a penny and wish and wish and wish until she traipsed back to her apartment that _The Times_ had paid for her. There was a little spot of coppery gold in the place where she threw her coin but to Andy it looked like blood.

Her articles were fantastic. Her series about the inner workings of France during it’s governmental turmoil were received well in both France and in the West. She was getting international recognition, and truthfully, she’d be surprised if she wasn’t at least nominated for an award for her work. But she had been working hard, _doing her job,_ and she hadn’t heard her phone ring. Hadn’t heard it vibrate desperately against the duvet in her bedroom as she worked in the living room. She hadn’t checked it when she went to sleep, either, but when she woke up she checked her phone. She saw the digits, the combination one so impossible that she laid back down and dozed for another few minutes, sure she was still dreaming.

She wasn’t. Miranda had called her, had been met with her dial tone and had not called again. In the turmoil of missing the call, missing _Miranda’s_ call, Andy smiled for the first time since she arrived in the City That Was Too Fucking Bright. She smiled and laughed and cried because _holy fucking shit?!_

Her wish had come true.


End file.
